Sunday, 2 February 2014

I asked the owner of company selling Fireproof safes, to show me the direct mail letter that was sent at out at a total marketing cost of 10K - a letter that produced ZERO sales. (That's what she told me in conversation)

Of course, she declined.

Too busy sheltering the fragile ego of the person she got to create the mailing, too intent in saving her own face by protecting her own reasons for hiring the nincompoop marketing help in the first place.

You would have thought that if a mailing piece doesn't work, that you'd be open, would get help in fixing it, especially when you've paid out 10k for NO results whatsoever. (And, they will probably roll out the same weak effort at another time, still being none the wiser as to WHY the thing flopped)

But no. That's not the case with the many dumb companies and businesses run with people who have no earthly idea what they're doing -- they have zero interest in testing different options in order to get different results.

Here's THE secret to sales, advertising and marketing success.

So long as a product or service is sound and has quality embedded inside it, and so long as the mailing is directed and targeted to THE most ideal prospect, the 'killer marketing app' that'll bring home the bacon is good old compelling, irresistible, salescopy.

My guess is the salescopy for the fire proof safe was possibly heavily feature driven, logical, boring (probably ZERO romancing the stone), no real offer, no strong call to action, no intrinsic or inherent value or education gained by reading the letter, no reasons why the product is demonstrably superior compared to all others, probably tried to sell the thing right off the letter instead of a number of alternatives, no incentives or gifts for taking the next step, no follow up mailings, no real goal for what the wanted the letter to actually, do.

That's not 100% certain of course. Though, it could be closer to the mark than not.

Hot salescopy IS the fuel lacking in most businesses selling any product or service you could probably name.

IT tools, software, data, CRM systems.. they're all rendered useless without the necessary & effective, sales driven COPY created to SELL the product or service.

Think about the pre-internet age and even, the pre-computer age; money was made by selling products via sales letters written on typewriters with carbon paper and sticky 'f' keys.

The MEDIA was different though what was the COMMON DENOMINATOR then, and NOW, to greater sales IS... irresistible, direct response salescopy.